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Thursday, May 15, 2014

Fruits of labour - my book in my hands

Today I received an advance copy of my new book "Exploring Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way: A Motorcycle Odyssey". The remaining copies are due to be delivered next week. It feels good to finally get my hands on the book nearly two years after I first set out to ride around the Irish coast. I'm very pleased with the quality of the printing, especially the photographs which had never looked good in the PDF formats that I had reviewed. The book cover looks great - now the hard part, selling it!

The book is published by The Liffey Press and the advance orders are OK (250+), but we still need to sell about 100 more to break even for the cost of printing. A launch date is still to be set - I'm hoping for early June, but I'm still waiting on confirmation from the person I have asked to do the launch.

Writing a book is something special - regardless of whether it gets published or not. David Givens of The Liffey Press believed in and supported me in the writing of this book. I owe him a lot of thanks. There is relief when it finally goes to the printers after dozens of reviews and editing, and there is relief when like today you get your hands on a printed copy. A successful book launch will also be a relief!

Both The Liffey Press and the National College of Ireland will issue Press Releases about the book and the launch - hopefully that will help publicize the book and sell a few copies. I will remain mercenary about this until we reach break-even. If you are reading this post and would like to come to the book launch - please let me know!